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REUNION
by : Jon Hodges
She still didn't have a solid explanation for taking this job in upstate Maine. She had loved her home job in Alabama. Now she would be making a mere five thousand more a year with some insignificant benefits tacked on.
As Monica continued to unpack, she thought back to what she had left behind. Her husband had left her four years ago after their son had died. She could still remember waking up, drenched with sweat from a horrific nightmare and glancing over to her husband to find him soundly asleep. Draping her arm around him, she had leaned over and kissed his cold cheek. The paramedics told her he had been dead for less than an hour.
Monica slowly rocked back against the wall and began to cry silently, suddenly displeased with her decision to move. She had left her dead husband and son behind, along with all of her friends who were still amongst the living. She thought if she moved far away, somewhere completely different, maybe she could start over. After all, she was still under the age of thirty, it shouldn't be too difficult.
She scooted the box against the wall and stood, walking to the front door while wiping away an acrid tear with the use of her sleeve. This sweater had been given to her by her loving husband just days before he had died.
As she walked out onto the porch towards the woodpile that stood at the corner of the lot, she removed her sweater and left it behind her on the ribbed cement. Her T-shirt proved to not be strong in the category of insulation but she denied to wear the sweater that reminded her so strongly of her lost husband. She looked over the towering woodpile, wandering how many mothers, sons, fathers had to die. Even trees had a family structure. A seedling was her son and as it died from a lack of exposure, so hers died from lack of love.
She had arrived home from work one day only to find that her newborn son was sound asleep, much like her husband when he had died. She had always been told Sudden Infant Death Syndrome was rare but it had become a reality.
Choking back her tears for the second time, she grabbed two wedges of wood from the pile and began to trudge back inside. Her stuttered breaths could be seen in waves polluting the air before her and above her as it drifted towards the heavens where her son and father played presently. Angry at herself for what she had let embrace her, such anger and turmoil, she threw the wood into the fireplace. Dry ashes which laced the floor of the fireplace were summoned into the dry air of her living room, creating a foggy noise of detail in her mind's eye. Wiping her stinging eyes of both tears and ashes, she reprimanded herself mentally for stirring up the remnants of mothers and fathers of past and reached her hand blindly to the mantle to grab a box of matches.
Striking a match, she stared at the flame for a moment until she felt the origin of the flame tease her callused fingertip. Painfully drawn from her trance, she tossed the match into the fireplace and watched the wood slowly catch fire. Yet another couple was being cremated in the alter.
Still in her crouched position, she glanced over her shoulder and saw her bare couch sitting against the opposite wall. Standing with a groan, her knees weak as always, she padded quietly to the beckoning cushions and tossed herself onto them horizontally, feeling her cheek sink into the soft material. She stared into the fire in a dazed state and began to think about her lost son, how he had proved to be smart at such a young age, even though he never reached the age of one.
As the flames grew taller and gained depth, more memories of her son flooded her mind. A silhouetted figure creeping through her cluttered memory sung her the nursery rhymes she had once sung to Alan. And as she stared into the fire, she saw an opera of emotions, singing the song Alan had loved so much.
Slowly the images of the flame contorted and an outline of her son's centrifugal face could be seen, beaming with pride. As she looked closer, she could make out his shoulders, dressed in soft pajamas.
Her heartbeat raced as she studied her son's figure more closely. Her son looked so happy but his shoulder was gripped by a broad hand. His father was there with him, giving her a last glance before she moved on with her life. She had dwelled on these two additions to her life for four years even after they had been taken away. She knew it was time to move on but it was impossible.
Her son's smile slowly mutated into a frown, saddened eyes calling to her for her love and adoration. Her soothing voice to sing him to sleep like it always did.
Absent-mindedly, she began to sing to herself through strangling tears. Her soft yet beautiful voice kindled the flame, setting it into a slow, rhythmic dance that moved with her fluid emotions.
While still singing, she slowly sat up on the couch, not breaking her eye contact with her son as his frown slowly transformed back into a smile. The hand on his shoulder slowly loosened it's grip and slid away retracting into the timber she had used to summon the memories of her son.
Her son's eyes swirled with adoration for his mother and he reached his arms out to her, begging for a hug. Her lips slowly cracked into a smile as she continued to sing. Her knees lowered to the ground and she stood on all fours, staring into the eyes of her welcoming son. Her husband's features could be seen over her son's left shoulder, smiling as brightly as her son. He blew her a kiss and slowly began to fade from the picture as did her son.
Her heart sped up for a second time, seeing the images of her ideal love fading into the hearth of the fireplace which had summoned such strong images, such inspiring memories. She slowly crawled forward, her song hesitating. The arms of her son remained outstretched, begging her to return home.
Monica slowly stopped singing and began to ponder on philosophies that seemed logical to herself. "Maybe she was the one that left them," she thought to herself. "They have gone home and here I am, still a vagrant in a lost land."
She crawled closer to the flame until she could feel the heat carress her face that was glowing pink from the fire, it's movements growing slower. The image of her son and husband continued to slowly fade and she called out to the flames deaf ears. But the images continued to fade, her husband's eyes calling her home.
It had been what she wanted all along. All she had ever dreamed of was to be reunited with her forgotten love, her son and her husband. And as she crawled into the flame, she smiled, embracing her husband and son with clasping hands that could only be pryed away by life, not death as she had once been led to believe.